Tablighi Jamaat shares links with terrorist groups | India News

NEW DELHI: Tablighi Jamaat, the global organization of Islamic missionaries, which may be the largest carrier of Covid-19 infection in India, has had a long history of links to banned terrorist teams based in Pakistan such as Harkat-ul- Mujahideen.

The original founders of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), the terrorist group known for the hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814 in 1999, were members of Tablighi Jamaat, according to Pakistani security analysts and Indian investigators.

Formed in 1985 as a dissident group from Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI), HuM participated in the Pakistan-backed jihad against Soviet forces to overthrow the Allied regime of the USSR in Afghanistan. According to intelligence estimates, more than 6,000 Tablighis were trained in the HuM terror camps in Pakistan.

The terrorist groups HuM and HuJI operated in Kashmir after the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, killing hundreds of civilians. The HuM cadre eventually joined the Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorist team founded by Masood Azhar, who had been released by India in exchange for IC814 passengers.

According to WikiLeaks documents, some of the September 11 al-Qaeda suspects detained by the United States in Guantanamo Bay had stayed at the Tablighi Jamaat premises in Nizamuddin West, New Delhi, several years ago.

By the way, Tablighi Jamaat was also suspected of involvement in the burning of 59 Hindu Kar Sevaks in the 2002 Godhra train fire incident in Gujarat, which led to communal riots in the state that claimed several lives.

According to an article written by the late Indian intelligence official and security expert, B. Raman, Jamaigh Tablighi branches in Pakistan and Bangladesh “occasionally received adverse attention for associating with jihadist terrorist organizations such as Harkat-ul- Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, who are members of the International Islamic Front for Jihad against the Crusaders and the Jewish people formed by the late Osama bin Laden in 1998 . ”

Citing Pakistani newspaper reports from the 1990s, Raman noted that trained cadres of jihadist terrorist organizations like HuM obtained visas posing as Tablighi Jamaat preachers and went abroad to recruit young Muslims for terrorist training in Pakistan.

Since millions of Tablighi Jamaat proselytizers travel the world preaching Islam, in line with radical Wahhabi-Salafist ideology, Jamaat developed a large following in the areas of Russia, Somalia, and some African countries in Chechnya and Dagestan.

Raman in his article wrote that “intelligence agencies in all of these countries suspected that Pakistan-based terrorist organizations were using the coverage of preaching to create sleeper cells in Muslim communities in different countries.” As a result, Tablighi Jamaat was blacklisted and their preachers were denied visas.

However, each year in India, thousands of Tablighi Jamaat members from various countries freely travel through many states and carry out their proselytizing activities.